From the Vault: A Major Award

Published Dec 24, 2022, 11:00 AM

The 1983 holiday film “A Christmas Story” warned us of the dangers associated with BB guns, bar soap and frozen flag poles – but it also introduced us to the Old Man’s prized leg lamp. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe dive into the deep, ancient and occult history of lamps and other objects shaped in the likeness of a human leg or foot. 

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time for an episode from the vault. This one asks the question, can Rob and Joe really make an episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind about the concept of a leg lamp? Can they? We did? Yes, this was I was surprised as anyone, and it turned off that way, But yeah we did one. Uh who did this episode of major award calling back of course holiday film a Christmas story and talking about leg shaped lamps and then diving into the deep ancient and occult history of lamps and other objects shaped in the likeness of a human leg or foot. This is from the holiday season from last year. Uh so we hope you enjoy it, either again or for the first time. Now. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Rate Deo. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is gonna be our last core at our last new Core episode of the year. And what do we have for you here? Another holiday episode? And we really didn't know until just a few days ago exactly what the holiday episode would be. We were talking about doing an episode on reindeer related stuff, and maybe we'll do that next year. We and then we were talking about, well, let's let's we've done previous episode where we talked about holiday inventions, Christmas inventions and so forth, maybe we could do another one of those, and um uh, you know, we started looking into some topics and we wound up focusing entirely upon the holiday film A Christmas Story, well not just on the movie, on the movie's most sacred prop that's right. And I mean for a little bit they we were thinking, well, look at all the things that are to talk abou in a Christmas story. We could talk about soap poisoning, freezing your tongue to a flagpole, the dangerous posed by BB guns, how furnaces work. I gotta say, I having looked into the medical literature on soap poisoning, first of all, it is a real thing. Second, that's some pretty dark territory, not not not the most fun way to head into the holidays. Well, I mean it's pretty dark in that Christmas story. You know. There he is he's a he's a child, and he's blind and his parents feel such remorse for having him put that bar of soap in his mouth. Now, from what I could tell in my brief investigation, I don't think it's dangerous to put a bar of soap in your mouth for a few minutes, but you definitely don't want to like eat a significant amount of it, right, So, so so poisoning is a thing. Yes, Okay, don't don't swallow soap. But like I said, we're not We're not focusing on the soap here. We're talking. We're gonna be talking about, um, the Old Man's Major Award. We're gonna be talking about that leg lamp now, Rob. I don't know if you've had this experience, but I can say most of my exposure to to a Christmas story the movie comes in the form of a sort of running, droning background noise that's going on at a at a some kind of family house around Christmas while it's just playing on an infinite loop on some cable TV station that that is turned on in a room I might not even be in very much, But when this happens, I noticed that this must have something to do with like the patterns with which I come and go into certain rooms in the house, so that that would be an interesting thing to study on its own. But will pretty frequently have the experience of seeing one scene in the movie like five times in the same day, and it's always the same scene. And for me, it has definitely been the scene where the old man is in the house and and a big crate arrives and it was that we get the lines about it being FREGGI lay and he digs through the straw and then pulls out this glorious leg lamp. Yeah, I have I have a similar experience with a Christmas story. Um, it would there were so there are. There have been some dedicated viewings of it, uh you know, throughout the years. Um, but most of it it's just it's on TV during Christmas, and therefore you watch it or you watch part of it, and so when you actually sat down and watch it in its entirety, there will be these scenes that you remember really vividly, and then there are scenes that you didn't realize we're part of the movie at all. That sort of thing. I should probably inform everyone what this movie has. A number of you were probably familiar with it, some of you were not Uh. This was a three holiday film that was based on the writings of Jane Shepherd, particularly on the book In God We Trust All Others Pay Cash. It's one boy's account of childhood holiday dreams, desires, and fears. It's a fun movie with with some solid laughs in it, some some some good heart, but not to a sappy degree, especially for a holiday film. And in some ways you could almost think of it as kind of like a a proto Simpsons, you know, like it's it's some of the gags that they get up to in a Christmas story are the sorts of things that would happen on The Simpsons later on. But of course the Simpsons leans more into more into the satire and more into like pop cultural references, you know what I'm talking about. Like that, you can't you imagine an episode where Homer gets some sort of obnoxious award that he wants to display at the front of the house. Marge doesn't like it, and uh, and maybe something terrible ends up happening to the award and he he blames her. Yeah, now that you say that, I can't imagine that being a plotline. Okay, yeah, I mean Ralphie is essentially a good boy, uh, whereas Bart is a bad boy. So uh, you know we have to take that into account as well. Yeah, Bart would not dream of getting a BB gun for Christmas. He would just go and I don't know, shoplift to be begun or something. Yeah, oh well, I mean I hope he learned his lesson from that Christmas episodes of The Simpsons where he did shoplift. Remember, Oh that's right. Oh I remember that One's actually very sad because his mother is very disappointed in him. And yeah, strings, Yeah, that's It's a solid episode like that sort of Simpson's episode reminds me a lot of of of this, though in a weird way. That Simpsons episode is more serious than a Christmas story is. Yeah, what is it? He steals? It's like a video game. It's like the bone Storm for whatever. Yeah, it's like essentially like a Mortal Kombat type game that just seems like the greatest thing ever. And they have like the muscled Santa Claus and the commercial. Yeah, so we're not gonna give a Christmas story the full weird house cinema treatment or anything here today. But I do want to just point out real quickly a few of the people involved in it because it's kind of fun. First of all, I was directed by Bob Clark, who also directed the notorious holiday proto slasher Black Christmas in four, which I have never seen, but it had a It had a great cast, including Olivia Hussey, Margo Kidder, Kira Dulia from two thousand and one of Space Odyssey, and of course weird how cinema favorite John Saxon. Everybody at home do a push up for John Saxon right now. Uh. He also directed Death Dream Murder by Decree, which is a Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Rippers story, two Porky's movies, two Baby Geniuses movies, Porky's and Baby Geniuses. Yeah, yeah, but still there's some good stuff in there. He passed away in two thousand seven, but I think a Christmas story is likely to remain his his legacy, Like this is the one that's gonna really stick. So I guess Black Christmas also has its place in film history as well. Sure, and uh, as far as the cast has well, has a wonderful cast Christmas story, but the two main characters worth pointing out for our purposes. The Old Man has played played by the always terrific Darren McGavin. This is the guy who played cold Shack the night Stalker. I think he was also in the Arnold Swartzenegger film Raw Deal Okay. And the mom is played by Melinda Dillon, who was in Harry and the Henderson's as well as Spontaneous Combustion, which is one of the films that we covered on Weird House Cinema this year. Did she play like the creepy scientist? She am? I right about that. It's really hard to remember. Everybody else just kind of grows dim against the burning fire. That is uh, that is a Doroff's performance in that. Brad Dorriff is just so good. Yeah, I just double checked she she's the German scientist. I think at some point Brad Dorroff goes to her house and maybe she catches on fire, and I don't know, probably that's probably the generally how it goes. Um. But I don't want to sell her short because Melinda Dylan is a great actor as well. She was she was in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Absence of Malice. In that she was nominated for two Academy Awards and one Tony Award. Okay, but we don't want to leave anybody out for the like eight people in the audience who have never seen this movie or even just seen this sequence in the movie on five times in the same day on Christmas. But what's the deal with the major award? Well, it is, as we've been saying, a major award. It is something he has won for his achievements, uh, in a game. And what is the game? Well, I think it's like it's like a trivia contest, maybe done through the mail from a newspaper. Though I think it's worth saying that he actually does not supply most of the answers on the contest. He has to ask Melinda Dillon and she actually knows the answers. Then he fills them in and it sends it off or something, and apparently wins this trivia contest by answering questions like what is the name of the Lone Rangers and nephews Horse. But later in the film, after he receives his major award, when people ask him how what it was for, he says, it's for mind power. Yeah, so it's it's this wonderful design. It is a lamp that is shaped like a woman's leg wearing a fishnet stocking with the shade resembling a kind of mini skirt or short hoop drafts or something. And um, as we as we learned in the show, it's it's an item of much controversy in the household. And um, and it's clear that Mom does not like this lamp and certainly does not think it belongs at the front of the house where neighbors can see it. Uh, you know, it's already Uh, it's it's becoming a topic of discussion in the neighborhood. And then what happens there is an accident. Somebody is cleaning too close to the lamp and it is accidentally destroyed. Now, I think one of the great points of humor in the movie is that it is never made clear why a lamp shaped like a sexy leg is the prize for winning this newspaper contest, Like that there's no connection there, Like why would this be what you get? Uh? And it's just not explained. Yeah, I mean it doesn't even say anything, um, you know on the lamp. It's not like the award is shaped like a lamp. No, this is just a lamp that shaped like a leg. Um, but but he is. He is fond of it. He thinks it is wonderful. She does not. It becomes a uh, it becomes a controversial issue between the two of them. It is destroyed. An attempt to rebuild the leg lamp seems pow ssible, but we'll never know if it was successful. We we we we we suspect that it was not. That this is something that, once broken can never be repaired. Well. I think also there's a little bit of subtlety there, because when the old man is trying to repair it with glue and failing, you sense in him a kind of a kind of waning enthusiasm, where it may be, in fact that he is realizing that his wife was correct in thinking that this lamp is rather tacky. Yeah, yeah, but he didn't want to admit it earlier. Right, So this is this lamp. This is a hilarious part of the film. This is based on the chapter My Old Man and the Siviest Special Award that heralded the birth of pop art from the nine novel in God We Trust All Others pay cash. But it's really taken on a life of its own since then, Um, you can now buy like replicas of the lamp, reproductions of the rent lamp in various sizes. You can get Christmas tree ornaments where the Christmas I mean, you can basically get Christmas tree ornaments of it, or even Christmas lights of the lamp. Like the lamp has become like this, um, this weird symbol all its own. I was. I was reading about it on read Craiger's blog Inventor's Digest, And apparently Shepherd was inspired to create this fictional lamp based on knee high soda ads that he remembered seeing a magazine showing two shapely legs up to the knee. Uh. He remembered these from from being from when he was a boy. And then for the film production designer Ruben Freed Uh he did the rest. And the lamp is apparently protected by two different trademarks. Uh. They've been mass produced over the years, and yes you can buy them today as functional lamps. When this movie came out, you can only dream of such a thing. I think they made like just a handful of these for the film, But now it is achievable by anyone. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, But I believe I read somewhere that the original lamp prop made for the film no longer exists. That is what I was reading as well. Yeah, lost to history like so many great works, like many of the artworks of the Parthenon, or just think the great antiquities, they just fade to time. Well, speaking of antiquities, obviously this, this can't be where the story begins and ends, right, There has to be more of it. There has to be more to the lamp that is a leg and the leg that is a lamp. By god, if there's not more to it, will make more to it. Absolutely. Well, let's go to the obvious place to discuss all of this is to go way back and just talk about lamps in general. The lamp and the movie is of course an electric lamp with origins in the early nineteenth century. But the history of illumination technology goes way back. Obviously, you can think to our invention episodes on fire technology. And indeed the most basic form of illumination technology is of course a mere torch or a burning brand of some sword, or even a very primitive you know, burning stick. Uh you know, these wall get it done. But according to Brian M. Fagan and Garrett G. Fagan um in the UH in the seventy grade. Inventions of the ancient world. UM wick burning lamps go back at least as far as the Late Paleolithic period. It's thirty thousands through ten thousand years ago. All you need is a reservoir of fuel and a wick made from plant fiber or even something like human hair. And the fuel itself can be any number of things. That can be oil, it can be fat, and sometimes salt was added to oil to keep it from overheating. Uh. Tons of lamps survived from the ancient world as these were, of course widespread and extremely useful pieces of technology. Uh. They illuminate your environment. They turn uh night time, well not it doesn't turn nighttime into day, but you know, it provides some of the illumination that you would have in the daytime in a nice concentrated form. Yeah. And I think one of the things that's useful about a lamp or like a candle. We've talked about this on UH Core episodes of the show before, is that they they provide moderate light for a long period of time. They're constructed so as to gradually slowly feed the fuel into the flame rather than have the fire just burned through the fuel source as fast as it possibly can, like it would with you know many other things like a you know, a lit stick or something. Yeah. So the technology here, the the device itself allows you to make the most out of your limited fuel. Now real quick, I want to want to just mention the Fagans quickly. Um Brian Fagan, of course, Brian and Fagan is uh is someone I sade a lot on the show um Starters. The That Great Inventions book is super useful. But he's written a number of volumes and still has books coming out, including a new book with Nadia Durrani titled Climate Chaos Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors. Now. The other Fagan, though, Garrett G. Fagan, was an Irish American ancient historian, best known for his social histories of Roman bathing and the Spectacles of the Roman Arena. And I could be wrong on this, but I do not believe these two Pagans are related at all. They just happen to work together in this one chapter, uh, in the seventy grade Inventions of the Ancient World that deals with illumination technology. Okay, so lamps go very far back for into the Paleolithic period, right, and lamp technology of this basic sword can be found from throughout Mesopotamia, and the shape of the reservoir varies, so you could you can use basically found objects as your reservoir. So seashells were often used because these were naturally occurring shallow bowls with ridges to accommodate a wick at one end. But then once you start making artificial reservoirs for your oil or your fat, whatever you're burning your fuel, um, then you're making them out of pottery or even metal. And this allows for all manner of simple and ornate lamp designs. And you know where we're going with that, right, Oh, of course. Yeah. The obvious question is how many of these lamps were shaped like legs? Well, are you going to tell me? Well, this is a difficult question to answer, Joe. Humans have, of course, always love to craft things in the likeness of animals and or themselves, and animal legs and feet have always been a favorite motif. In fact, uh Fagan includes an image of one in the book. It's a first century CE brazier from Pompey with beautiful like animal feet supporting it and of course, we still see this today with you know, tubs anything. It's like it's like the human Artistan can't help it. It's like, why have put feet upon this device or this prop or this piece of furniture? Uh? Could I not make those feet like actual feet? Uh? And I guess you can even say there's a bit of biomimicry there as well, like if you're going to support an object with these like stumpy pods, uh, well maybe make them look like a foot. That's true. In fact, you've got me thinking about how often the legs of you know, fancier pieces of furniture are kind of shaped to be organic or flesh like in a way. They might have kind of curves on them, similar to a human leg or to an animal leg, even if they're not explicitly trying to depict a human or animal leg like with toes and stuff, right though, of course, there are plenty of explicit depictions out there where it's like it's straight up looks like the foot of a lion or a goat or what have you. Thank you, thank you, thank so. Looking around in the history of lamp designs, um, you know, I'm sure I missed something interesting, But I've come across two different examples of UH from from from Greek and Roman traditions that are that are pretty interesting, particularly when dealing with the Greek ascos and the Greek alabastron. So an ascos is an ancient Greek pottery vessel used to pour liquids such as oils, so it is not quite a lamp, though it could have been used to store lamp oil and could have been used to refill lamps. And many of these were decorated and decorational, sometimes in the form of animals. And then an alabastron is similar. It's a a pottery vessel often used for holding oils or perfumes, named for the carved alabaster containers from Egypt that started the design key and the key thing here is that these are generally elongated, so um they are by their very nature and their sort of generic form kind of leg shaped. So you'll find both the of these in various shapes and forms, and and they're littered throughout museums and collections around the world. But I was able to find some images of for starters, there's a leg shaped ascos or alabastron that is or was in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, though I've had trouble finding out any additional information about it. I might have to ask anyone out there who has has visited the Royal Ontario Museum or or can visit it now, to go in and try and get me more answers on this. But the image I found is indeed uh an alabastron, or it appears to be an alabaster. It's hard to figure out what the scale is here. It is shaped like a essentially like a naked human leg, and it's free standing. It looks like it had it maybe has sandals drawn on it um and it was yeah, used to hold oil or something. This gives new meaning to the the expression that someone who can hold their liquor has a quote hollow leg. Yes, this is indeed hollow leg. I wonder if that yeah. I didn't even think about that that that phrase. Um. Now I was able to find more information on another one. There is a Greek pottery alabastron in the shape of aggrieved or armored leg from Corinth or Rhodes circus six century b c E. And it's part or was I'm not sure of. The Callos Collection in London included an image of this uh for you to look at as well. Joe. So, so this is less decorative um and but also is not a naked leg. It has armor on it. Yeah, this is more like an ancient RoboCop leg. Yeah. And the Callos Collection website shares the following quote. The callous example above is a very rare and fine alabasterone that takes the shape of a leg protected by a grieve, dating to the sixth century b c e. It is an interesting example of a plastic vase from this period. And note the use of the term plastic here. Uh. It's not modern plastic obviously. This just means that it's molded, and this is derived from the Greek verb plastine, meaning to mold. Quote. The grief is outlined in black slip and tapers towards the ankle area. The foot emerges beneath with carefully insize details for the sandal and toes. Although primarily used as a container, the form of this alabastron as a grieved leg implies that it may also have been used um at or dedicated to a sanctuary as a votive offering There is a very similar example of this rare type in the Museum of Pharmacia in Portugal, and they include an inventory number and I was able to look it up. It's number uh ten two, and you get kind of a delightful rear view of this free standing hollow leg was Okay, so it seems like a bunch of ancient Greeks really uh pouring stuff out of legs. Yeah. Now, again, these are not lamps. They're merely containers that may have contained lamp oil and may have been used to refill lamps. But we're not done yet. So, as the Pagans point out, the Roman period was a time of of pottery lamp mass production, and lamps of every design were used for not only practical reasons, you know, providing illumination when you need it, but also purely esthetic reasons and even religious and occult reasons. And that brings us to the next example, the Roman foot lamp. I initially found these on the Ferraby Keeper blog by Wayne Ferraby, a Brooklyn based writer, and I have to say this is quite a good, good looking blog. Looks like a lot of interesting content on here. I anyone wants to check it out it's uh Farrabee Keeper dot WordPress dot com. And uh, the great thing here is that we're not just talking about one lamp. We're not talking about oh well, here's the Roman foot lamp, and we we don't we have no idea why they made this. Instead, we have several different surviving lamps. And Uh, I've included images for you to look at, Joe. I invite anyone out there to either visit that Ferraby website or to to do Google image searches so you can pull this up for yourself, because these are these are wondrous and and really strange to look at. They are lamps in the shape of of a human foot, as the name implies. With with with with essentially a stopper or lid um at the aperture where the stump of the disembodied foot would be, and then there's another aperture at the big toe, and it is from this that the wick and therefore the flame would emerge. Right, So I guess you would hold this by the handle at the back of the foot, so you're holding it like behind the heel, and then you would have the flame sticking out of the big toe at the front. Yes, if you were holding it. But then, as we'll discuss, there are some questions regarding exactly what one does with a foot lamp um. But but I'm looking at it too. It also reminds me a bit of depictions of the hand of Glory, the you know, the occult item that is supposed to be like the the the disembodied hand of a like a criminals corpse that is then transformed in this into this magical item that burns candle light from the fingertips and you know, has strange energies and effects. Except this is not a hand. This is a foot. It's not a real it's a ceramic foot and uh, you know it's it's a a foot of pottery and uh and yeah, there is this flame that is emitting from either in front of the toe or from the toe itself. It depends on exactly how how the sculptor or has has has arranged it. You know. Now, what I would wonder is is this just like because somebody wanted an interesting lamp and they made lamps that look like looked like all kinds of things, or would a foot lamp have a particular significance in say a religious or political context or something. Yeah, and that is that is the riddle that that that the rest of us are left having to solve. So Ferraby points out that the symbols and motifs of the ancient Romans don't always make sense to us today, which I think is a very fair point. And uh and he He says that the best explanation that he could find where that these were sort of literal footlights placed on the floor or ground, especially at the base of murals, which which is inter It's still hard to figure out exactly like what at me, is it just you know, pure novelty. It's like, well, it's it's a foot lamp, or it's a it's a lamp that goes on the ground where our feet are. Let's make it in the shape of a foot as well. Well, to call back to the Simpsons. That kind of reminds me of why is their corn on the curtains in the kitchen, I don't know, kitchen food corn? Yeah, Or imagine um time travel or visiting our current agent finding solar powered outdoor lights that look like mushrooms? Why do they look like mushrooms? Well, I mean it basically comes down to there on the ground where mushrooms are. Um, so why not make them look like mushrooms? It amuses us. It just makes sense, yes, But I decided to look into this a little bit deep deeper, and I looked in a book titled Light and Darkness and Ancient Greek myth and Religion from two thousand ten. Uh. This has numerous authors on it, but is edited by Christophilis and Levaniuk, and they mentioned that Roman foot lamps were used in incubation rituals, citing a couple of sources as well that I try to follow, but I don't think they actually have English translations. So incubation rituals or dream incubation rituals involved involved sleeping in sacred places in order to receive dreams or visions, and it seems that copious amounts of lamps were often associated with many of the sites where you would engage in incubation rituals, as described in a book by Sandra Blakely titled God's Objects and Ritual Practice. I don't remember what episode it was in the past, but somehow this came up, but I think we were talking about ancient rituals for dream incubation, specifically with regard to the Greek god of healing and medicine Asclepius, where people who were sick and wanted healing would come to the temple of Asclepius and actually sleep in the temple in order to like they'd make an offering or do a ritual and they'd sleep in the temple in order to receive a dream from the god as a form of cure for their illness. Yeah, there you go. That would that would be dreaming incubation. That's what we're talking about here. But how do these lamps come into play? I found another source that had some wonderful inside here. Uh And this was a ninety six paper titled Material on the Cult of Sarapis by Dorothy Kent Hill. And um, I'm gonna read a quote from it here, but first I want to run through a couple of things here so that everyone will will know what what's being referred to. So, first of all, Ureus is a curling snake motif probably best recognized as a symbol of divine authority on the heads of of of of Egyptian sarcophagus is. Uh. So, I think everyone's probably seen one of these before, you know, like a like a hooded cobra or a snake that is emerging from a head dress or from the head of one of these artistic depictions, also known as a boss snake. Okay, yeah, and then Sarapis, it was a echo Egyptian deity. He was introduced but not necessarily created by Greek pharaoh Ptolemy the first Soda as an attempt to unify Greek and Egyptian culture, specifically as a generaldine. Pinch points out, in Egyptian mythology a di z he was meant to be a combination of APIs and Osiris and Zeus and Dionysus. Now, Sarapus is often depicted with something on his head that might be confused by the casual viewer as maybe something that is also involved in illumination, Like it looks like you look at images of him and it kind of looks like you're supposed to put a candle on top of his head. Yeah, yeah, And it doesn't really look like a hat or anything. It just looks like there's some kind of like container or bucket or something attached to his head in in the form that he's in now, as as a piece of statuary or something. Yeah, So at first I was thinking, well that maybe it's illumination is involved in more ways than one here, But as it turns out, Sarapis is often depicted with this um with this thing on his head called a a modius, which is a basket grain measure, a Greek symbol for the land of the dead. Now, in this text by by Dorothy Kent hill Um, she includes two images of bronze lamps in the form of human feet, and that they're very much like we've we've described thus far, except there there's an extra interesting thing about them. So, yes, you have the big toe or or something just beyond the big toe that is clearly designed for the wick to go in and for flame to come out of. There is the the larger aperture at the stump of the disembodied foot. But in both of these you also have a rod that's basically going up from the base of the heel. And uh and and this is something that that she ends up reflecting on. I should also add at the top of this this rod that's emerging from the base of the heel, we see once once more, this ureus symbol. We see the curled snake. Oh yeah, there it is with the hood flared. So this is what what she had to say. Quote. Lamps modeled after parts of the body, especially the foot, were very common in antiquity. Such a lamp might reflect no more than a whimsical mood of a craftsman. But the ureus immediately suggests a connection with the giant detached sarapis feed recently studied by dal and Opsen. On these monuments, the ureus is usually curled somewhere in the neighborhood of the ankle. Here it coils on a rod which rises at the back of the foot. The space between the top of the foot and the tail of the snake is great enough to accommodate a small bust of sarapis, which would correspond in position to the busts on some of the stone feet. We have observed that something was attached to the cover, and may now suggest a bust of the god as the most plausible candidate. If the bust were placed in this position, the ureus would appear to loom over the head of the god. Wait a minute, so I feel like I must be understanding this wrong. But does this mean this would be a foot with the head on the on the leg of the foot, and then a snake over the head. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's what I am. I am to understand here. It's kind of like, here's a foot, let's put it. Or or maybe we should think in reverse. I have a bust of a of a god. I want to display um. I want to display it. I don't want to just lay it on the floor though. I need something to hold it up, and also I need to illuminate it. Well, I need a foot, and I need a foot that emits fire, and and then you know they're able to work the urus into it as the as the rod that is holding the bust above the foot. And there's more, because she writes quote the smoke rising before the god from the lamp would create an eerie religious effect. Although Sarapis was by no means the only deity honored on Laps his frequent presence, there is evidence for the probability of his guardianship over this bronze foot, referring to the example that she's talking about in the article. Certainly, how ever, there are not good grounds for connecting all foot shaped lamps with the Sarapis cult. Interestingly enough, she also speculates she she brings up Psalms one nineteen the world thy word is a lamp into my feet and a light into my path um, suggesting that you know, there are various ways we could interpret a foot shaped lamp um that in and and uh, and and again it comes back to the basic question like how much of this is novelty, how much of it is based in some reference that just has not survived the ages, or indeed, I mean I have to say this, this idea of of the lamp being used to um to illuminate and create like a smoky effect before the the image of a god. Uh, there's something attractive about that. And and perhaps this idea too, Yeah that it's like if well, if I'm going to hold up the face of a god on some sort of a stand, then I need it to be in a foot as well. Like I there's something about the compulsion there that is that's fascinating. Like would be wrong to to to to to hold up that bust of Sarapis without a foot, without a human foot at the bottom? Would there be something kind of blasphemous about that? I wonder, Well, it's funny how the idea of a pedestal is derived from pad like foot, but in this case it's literally a foot. Yeah, And this is this is interesting too to think of in comparison to a Christmas story, because obviously, with the Christmas story, part of the whole deal with the lamp is that it is objectification of the female form. It's the idea of like, here is just the leg of a woman that is sexy, um, you know, without taking you into account the rest of her as a physical whole being and of course as a person um. In this it almost seems like we have the reverse where it's like, well, if we're going to have something else attached to this piece of a god, we need it to also be a physical piece of said God. Perhaps, okay, I'm going with you now. Realistically, I think that's about all the connects these ancient foot lamps with a Christmas story, you know, probably no more than to say making just including lamps. It look like feeder legs is just the sort of thing that human artisans might do. But I think if we were to be unrealistic about the connection, we could we could wonder that perhaps what has happened here is the old man has has entered into the worship of an ancient Greco Egyptian god and wishes to bring the city of Cleveland under his domain. His wife, however, clearly she serves the god Osiris, who Sarapis, you know, partially replaces whereas it was introduced to replace, and so she brings about the lamps destruction in a campaign to keep Cleveland under the sway of the green skinned god. Yeah. I think there's also some underworld stuff you can do with him going into the basement to fight the furnace. That seems to connect maybe somehow. Oh, but you know, we also have to think about the fact that, okay, if if the god Sarapis is also still Osiris into some to to some extent, I mean, part of the whole myth of Osiris is that his body is dismembered. You know, that's part of the whole, uh, you know Osirius Smith's cycle. It's about his death and resurrection. And of course we see the lamp broken into pieces as well, and an attempt, a failed attempt to resurrect it. That that's very good. Kudo kudos to you. Rob. I'm I'm just I'm just interpreting the work of the gods. Here, I'm just a messenger. Yes, thank you, thank you. Now, on the subject of tenuous connections to ancient art, I wanted to talk about leg sculpture a little bit more broadly, and at the risk of getting sappy, I also just have to say that the idea of sculpture of the human form as a lamp got me thinking about a line in one of my favorite poems. I'm sure this is what I've brought up on the show before. I don't remember when, but it's the poem The Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilka. I'm sure I've read this one at you before. Rob. Let's see I read a little bit and i'll see of rings a bell. Okay, well, so this is the English translation by Stephen Mitchell. I can't read the whole poem, but but it's worth looking up The Archaic Torso of Apollo. It's an excellent poem. But Stephen mitchell translation begins, we cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit, and yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze now turned low gleams in all its power. Alright, alright. From here, he goes on to describe this the kind of strange life flowing through this, uh, this dismembered sculpture from from ancient Greece. And it ends with a line that's pretty famous in in this translation. It says, for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. So it's about Rolka's experience of looking at this uh, fragment of an an ancient sculpture of the human form that he sees. I think he sees it in the louver one day and uh and having this profound kind of stirring and even frightening human connection with it. Now, the word that appears as lamp in this English version I think I've seen translated as kendelabrum in others. But in any case, I like this because the line in the poem seems to be confessing the power of great sculpture, to suggest that there's something more than just mimicry of the shape of a human in great sculpture. It's not just that great sculpture gets the the outline and the form and the contours of human right it's that in great sculpture, something actually seems to be alive inside it, almost perceptibly moving or lighting up. And I think this is the case for Realka. Even though the sculpture he's looking at has arrived in the modern world in a totally degraded form, he mentions that it has no head. He calls it a torso. So I looked it up, and I think the actual artwork the he's talking about here is usually understood to be an artifact in the collection of the Louver called the coross of Melitas or the torso of Melitas. So it is the torso of this nude male figure that's a very common form of sculpture in an archaic Greek art known as the coros, and this one was excavated from the remains of Melitas. It is missing its head, it's missing both arms. It's missing one leg up to the upper thigh and the other leg from above the knee. Rob, I've got an image from a couple of angles for you to look at just down below here. Yeah, it is quite quite striking. Yeah, that did the life like muscle definition on this torso. I agree, even though it's like missing most of the parts of the body. There's still something a little bit haunting about it. I know what Roka is talking about, because I see a kind of hint of that that light or animating life force in it, though in a in a muted or half formed way, which I think is the ambiguity that makes the sculpture an interesting subject for poetry. It's it's what we we can't fully see or know about it that makes it unsettling, and something kind of rings within our chest when we look at it, and I think that's the thing also that leads real good to say you must change your life. But but this leads me to to the fuller observation I wanted to make connecting the leg lamp to art history, which is that I think you could make a pretty good case that when it comes to sculpture of the human form, the legs are the life. Now why would I say that? Here's the case I want to make. Uh. One thing that's interesting about this sculpture, the coross of Melitas, is that it seems to come from a period of transition in in ancient Greek art, when Greek art was moving from what modern art historians called the archaic period into what we now call the Classical period, and this transition was sometime in the fifth century BC. That seemed to be roughly the turning point. Uh. And so rob to illustrate, I want to let you look at a couple of statues of the human form, both from ancient Greece, and so there's gonna be one here you can look at on the left that's typical of the archaic style, and one on the right that's typical of the classical style. Uh. These are both images I found on the website of the met Museum, so both things in the collection there, but to describe them from you out there listening at home. The older statue, I would say is very rigid, with very straight upright posture. It is looking straight forward at you with very square shoulders, and the head is pointed straight towards you. So it's it's very just an aligned body. In fact, I would say that in a lot of ways, it looks similar to sculpture from ancient Egypt. Yeah. It it has a very two dimensional kind of appearance to it. It's forward facing. Um, it does not even though it is itself a three dimensional object. It is not really like owning that three dimension call space, right, And I want to be clear as I go ahead that I would say, for my part, I think both of these styles are beautiful, both striking in their own way. I certainly would not say that I think one is somehow better than the other, but there is a difference. So when you look at the second kind, the sculptures that are typical of the classical style beginning in the fifth century b c e. A good example of this, if you want to look it up at home. One is called the dory for Os or the spear Bearer by the ancient Greek sculptor Polyclitus p O L y K L e I t O s. And these classical ones are very different in that they have I would say, this powerful lifelike quality that we see developing in this period. It looks it looks like there is something alive and even moving inside this this totally still hunk of dead rock. Yeah. And I think if you've ever visited a sculpture garden gotten over and Organda does, to see some of these classical works and reproductions of the classical works, you know exactly what we're talking about. You know. It's that that feeling that this is this is life that was captured, uh and frozen. You know that you look at it at one of these statues and it looks as if it had just moved and it wasn't even necessarily posing for the artist, you know. Yeah, that's a great comparison. They often the classical sculptures look as if, you know, you're a fly on the wall and you have just frozen time in the middle of a scene, and and and this is what was happening while say, you know, the discus thrower was was winding up to throw, or somebody was leaning back to regard someone who had just entered the room. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Like the spear bear here, he's kind of as the post like, oh are you sculpturing me? I'm sorry, I was just standing here naked. Yeah. So the question is what makes the difference? How do you go again? I think both styles are wonderful, But what makes the difference from this style that is striking as artwork but doesn't look life like to this kind of the classical period that almost it feels like it has a pulse, you know, it looks like there's something just about to move. I think there are a number of changes in artistic technique, and I fully admit that there's a lot about classical art that I don't know or understand, but I I am to understand that one of the most significant developments here is a change in the approach to the depictions of legs, hips, and posture, which would come to be known by later artists and scholars as contra posto. So I was trying to find a succinct definition of this. I found one on a website for the National Galleries of Scotland. So this museum describes contra posto as quote, a standing human figure carrying its weight on one leg so that the opposite hip rises to produce a relaxed curve in the body. Now, I hope when I say that you can kind of picture you realize, like, oh, yes, I have seen statues like this where the figure being shown has all of their weight shifted to their back leg and their other leg is kind of lifted and bent, and this sort of causes a a shift, a corresponding shift in the position of the hips, and then also causes a kind of twist in the spine where it looks like the character has been caught in the middle of turning or leaning or or relaxing or something. And the result is this, this powerful, striking quality of life caught in the middle of motion. Yeah. Absolutely. And again this is in contrast to the posture that would have been common for standing sculptures of the human form in Greek art of the period just before this, the Archaic period, where again the coross the the nude male figure would usually have a rigid, straight posture with weight equally distributed on both legs. Uh. And for again, for some reason, while I think that is artistically beautiful, it doesn't look alive. Something happens when you twist the form like that, the adjustment of the legs so that the weight is on one leg and not the other. It almost seems to peel back this opening in the shroud that separates animate from inanimate. You you shift the weight across the legs and the twist the hips in the spine accordingly, and something just happens. Stone can become flesh, and sculpture can sort of it can start to have that glow, that unsettling quality of movement or soul. I don't think I'd really thought about this much before, but yeah, absolutely, you look at you look at these uh, these statues, the ones that are the most lifelike. Can you do see this kind of Uh, it's it's in the legs. Often, it's it's how though the weight is distributed. I mean really one of the most iconic examples of this would probably be Michaelangelo's David. Um. Oh yeah, where if you you look look at the legs and it's exactly what we're talking about here. Well, yes, I think actually, uh again, I admit I don't know a ton about art history, but I think that this is something that was consciously sort of noticed and then recreated on purpose by Renaissance artists looking act to classical art, like they they sort of noticed this about the legs and the posture and said like, oh, hey, you know, let do like that and even kicking up kicking up a notch from there, because I think the Renaissance artists took it a step further where there would be sort of like a double twist in the body like you see on the David, where the the you know, the legs are the legs have the lower bodies weight shifted one way and then the upper bodies kind of kind of shifting back even in the other direction. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at a photo of it right now, and yeah, absolutely, So there's my case. The legs are the life. It makes me want to go and uh and and visit a museum with a number of sculptures. I go to the met and started looking at the legs more because often there's the legs are not the the the obvious focal point of the statue. Instead, you're drawn to um what you're drawn to, like the chest or you're or or certainly with the nude statues, you might you know, notice what is there or isn't there concerning the groin. Oftentimes they have a weapon or their holding like the head of a medusa, or they're fighting a centaur. There's generally a lot going on. It's easy to miss the legs and not think about these things. But but now that it's been pointed out to me, like I I want to I want to go. I want to look at the legs of some statues and see see to what extent there there. You know, their life is brought about by this effect. Yeah, totally. Once you notice it, you kind of can't unsee it. Yeah, So to conclude, I guess you must change your life and uh, and how would you connect all of this to A Christmas Story and the major award? Well, I told you it was going to be tenuous, but okay, you know leg sculpture, right, Uh, that's what I got, all right now, Obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do you do you have additional insights on the history of lamps that look like legs or feet or the history of of sculpture and um and and an artifice depicting legs and feet? Certainly right in because we would love to hear from you. Also, just additional thoughts on the d occult uh secrets that are hidden within the film A Christmas Story? Are you going to fall asleep with it playing? To incubate a dream? That? Yeah, bring you a gift from the gods. It is a film with multiple like dream and vision sequences in it, so it kind of perfect for that, all right. Like we said this, this will probably be the last new episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind for the year, but we'll be back in January with all new episodes. Uh, we're gonna We're gonna be exciting. I'm excited to see what kind of topics we end up discussing. We have a whole list of potential topics, stuff we've thought up, stuff that that you have submitted to us, so we have we have plenty, plenty of material to draw from and we're looking forward to it. Uh. In the meantime, you can find all of our episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. Core episodes of the show on Tuesdays and Thursday's Listener Mail on Monday's short form artifact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to set aside most practical and serious concerns and just talk about a strange film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows

Stuff To Blow Your Mind

Deep in the back of your mind, you’ve always had the feeling that there’s something strange about re 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 2,718 clip(s)